Saturday, December 21, 2013

For a year or maybe longer I just haven't had that snap in my life. My racing has been off but even more than that many other markers like sleep patterns, mood and energy have been off. Most of the time I blame the travel that I do and if you look below you can see why:

2013 Travel Stats
130,000 miles in the air
75 nights in a hotel
10-15 overnight flights
7 trips with time changes greater than the standard USA 3 hours.

But instead of living it any more I decided to spend the money to get myself a full blood test. I used Wellness FX (www.wellnessfx.com) but there are many others like them. It's a simple process, you go to a local lab, and 3-5 days later your results show up on your WFX web page. Some 75 blood markers is what we looked and here are the key results right now.

Cholesterol - My total cholesterol is 223. I believe that would automatically make me a candidate for Statins if I went the medical rout. But if you look deeper I am not concerned.

HDL 107
LDL 102
Tiyglycerides 72

The LDL 102 would put me in the automatic Statin range. But the TG/HDL ratio of much lower than 1.0 which tells you that the LDL that I have is made up of mostly fat healthy cells and not oxidized cells. That and my HDL is really high. I give that all to the food I eat. Natural not from a box food. No Gluten and very little sugar.

Ferritin - My Ferritin (Iron Storage) levels are high at 173. The medical field believes this is a normal level. The functional medical field believes anything above 100 is too high and needs to be addressed immediately. So Thursday I gave Blood and will do so 2 more times in the next 3 months. I assume once we get it down we'll work on things to keep it down.

Thyroid - My thryroid is extremely high. We hear often that Obese people talk about low thyroid as one of their issues. Well the high thryroid does the opposite, it won't let you gain wait. Given the fact that I shed weight quickly this is an issue. So Friday I had another blood test to see go deep on Thyroid. Hopefully we can find the one marker driving it.

But we're also addressing a couple of the other markers that deal with energy and strength. My friend has me on a heavy dose of Amino Acids. Dose normally for a 250lb man. If changes don't occur than we will add to the mix. The Amino Acids I'm taking are a powder form that I drink twice a day. I will do this until the first of the year and then report back to Chris where then we will make a decision to carry on or stack on top of the Aminos.

I am also tracking my resting HR and Heart Rate Variability daily. Both are an indication of how rested you are. My HR has been it's normal low always in the 40's or in the 30's if I do it in bed. But the HRV has been low especially since I started the major travel block over the last 8 weeks. For me below 85 is low and yesterday my HRV was 58 and today it was 65. Once that number gets back to normal I can then expect to feel or not feel the effect of the Aminos.

The current trend term of what I'm doing is Biohacking. What I'm really doing is simply trying to be a better man.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The Cross Country Season is officially over. Saturday marked the final race and it was a doozy. Only 175 of the fastest high school runners in the wild west. The occasion was the Footlocker West Region Championship at Mt Sac. The top 10 runners from this race move on to the National Championship held each year in Balboa Park, San Diego. Marco and the boys wanted to run the Mt Sac course and they wanted to finish the season on a high note. The day dawned cold and wet, perfect cross country weather. I've been to the Footlocker finals at least 10 years and to watch my son run in this West Final was emotional. When the gun went off tears, filled my eyes. The boys can walk off the season proud. They weren't the fastest in the group but they all ran strong, and finished strong. For Marco, he was one of 15 underclassmen in the race and he got a taste of big time cross country. He walked away from the race hungry which is a good thing.

This brings me to Good Friends. Marco and I sat down last week to talk about his goals for his senior year. We then back up and he set his goals for the upcoming track Season. First step was to give those goals to his coach and the second step was to establish some practices of injury prevention. So we turned to Chris Maund of Pacific Health and Fitness in Encintas. Chris is the trainer to the stars and he graciously took and hour out of his day to spend with Marco teaching him mobilization and stretching he could do. It was a great session and it was totally fun to watch Chris and Marco work together. They've known each other for 15 years and they've gone from little boy, man talk to man to man talk and now Trainer to Athlete talk. So very cool to see.

I take away from this that watching fast boys is fun and it's even better when one of them is your own. It's also great to have good friends who are willing to help with the goals of a 15 year old.

Monday, December 2, 2013

If you haven't noticed I am a hacker. A living hacker. What that means is that in the areas of Body, Mind, Relationships and work life I'm always looking at ways to become better.

My #1 relationship is with my wife Mary and for that I'm always working on it. It's how you stay married for 20 years. The Podcast below is some of the best stuff I've heard in a long time. It's worth a listen to man or woman. I'm going to listen to it again just to reaffirm it all.